Top positive review

I should preface this book with a personal explanation. The best way to approach Sherman Alexie is to look into your own personal history regarding American Indians. For me, I grew up with the vague notion that Indians didn't exist anymore. I think a lot of kids that don't live near large Native American populations suffer from this perception. I mean, where in popular culture do you ever come across a modern day Indian? There was that movie "Smoke Signals" (based on one of the stories in this book) and possibly the television show "Northern Exposure" but that is it, ladies and gentlemen. In my own life, realization hit when I started Junior High and read "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" for the very first time. If you've read the book then you know that it dwells on the character "Chief" and his past. I read about him and found out that I knew diddly over squat about Native Americans. They show "Dances With Wolves" in high school homeroom and through that you're supposed to infer contemporary Indian culture? That's like watching "Gone With the Wind" and wondering where all the happy slaves are today. It doesn't make sense. This is why I'm nominating, "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight In Heaven" as the book that should be required in every Junior High and High School in the country immediately. We've all read our "Catcher In the Rye" and "Scarlet Letter". Now let's read something real.

The book is a collection of short stories, all containing repeating characters and events. There is no single plot to the story and while the character of Victor is probably the closest thing the book has to a protagonist, he hardly hogs the spotlight for very long. In this book we witness a single Spokane Reservation. We watch personal triumphs and repeated failures and mistakes. Author Alexie draws on history, tradition, and contemporary realism to convey the current state of the American Indian. You'll learn more than you thought to.

My favorite chapter in this book, bar none, is "A Good Story". In it, a character's mother mentions that her son's stories are always kind of depressing. By this point the reader is more than halfway through the book and has probably thought the same thing (deny it though they might). In response, Junior tells a story that isn't depressing. Just thoughtful and interesting. It's as if Alexie himself has conceded briefly that, no, the stories in this book aren't of the cheery happy-go-lucky nature the reader might be looking for. That's probably because the stories are desperately real and fantastical all at once. To be honest, I feel a bit inadequate reviewing this book. It's obvious that Alexie is probably the greatest writer of his generation. Hence, these stories are infinitely readable and distressing.

This is a good book. This is the book to read when you ask yourself, "What author haven't I ever read before?". This is the book you will find yourself poring over on subways, buses, and taxi cabs. You'll leave it on park benches and run twenty blocks north to retrieve it again. I don't know how many other ways I can say that it's a good book. Well worth reading. Funny and taxing all at once. Sherman Alexie deserves greater praise than any I can give him. All I can say then is that this book is beautiful. Read this book.

Top critical review

Sherman Alexie, himself a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, writes with great wit and obvious anguish about life on the modern Indian reservation. This book, it isn't really a novel but 22 interlinked stories, depicts a life where alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, car wrecks and violence compete with history for a claim on the residents' souls and where the worst epithet is "apple", an Indian who is red on the outside but white on the inside. The cumulative impact of the stories is to create a sense of despair. It seems like the characters are unwilling to break out of a hopeless cycle of doom, defeatism and failure.The best of the stories, "This Is What it Means to say Phoenix, Arizona", offers a glimpse at the possibility for something better.The stories are relatively free of the New Age wise Indian pabulum we see so much of and despite a few dated and silly references to things like El Salvador, overt politics doesn't intrude much. Best of all, Alexie does not make excuses for his characters. He recognizes that their dismal lives are the product of conscious choices, but that the choices are bad ones. This is the great strength of the book, his ability to judge the characters harshly, yet present them with obvious affection.However bleak, this is a very interesting book.GRADE: B-

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

This is an awesome collection, but when you read it, keep in mind that the stories are not supposed to be connected. Each wonderful story stands on its own and portrays reservation life from the perspective of different characters, although some characters appear peripherally in more than one story. Some may say that Alexie is angry and that this book describes a life of alcoholic depressiveness on the Rez; in reality he is just describing much of what is. There is love and caring and pride and intelligence right next to the stuff one might consider ugly. Reading this book will alternately make you sad and happy--that's what Life is anyway.And go rent the movie, Smoke Signals; Alexie wrote the screenplay for it based on some of the scenes from this book, but don't expect the book to be like the movie or vice versa. Alexie is a talented young writer who deserves the attention he is getting.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

I will confess to having known almost nothing about this book before buying it. "Native American" writing is sometimes filled with spiritualism, and with rare exceptions I avoid the stuff.

However, Sherman Alexie gave a great interview in the New York Times book review last month, full of warmth and humor, and expressing a personal dislike of "Native American" books himself. He won my admiration and I decided he had earned my book purchase.

To me, this book seems to have a lot in common with Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried," in that it's fiction, but uses fiction to tell deeper truths than might have been possible with a strict work of nonfiction. Also, like "The Things They Carried," this is a collection of short stories, but with so much overlap in themes and characters and setting that it more-or-less tells a single story.

It's a story about childhood, and being an Indian (Alexie uses the word freely, so I'm going to use it here), and growing up on the "rez." And it's a story about a world drenched with alcohol and drug abuse. I found "The Trial of Thomas Builds-the-Fire" and "Jesus Christ's Half-Brother is Alive and Well on the Spokane Indian Reservation" to be the strongest pieces in the collection.

Some of the characters in some of these stories experience victory, but for the most part they're stuck in a difficult place, far from the centers of commerce and culture, jealous of their ancestors, bitter at their contemporaries, proud even when there don't seem to be any concrete accomplishments to be proud of. I've lived in areas with significant Native American populations, but I think my empathy is much deeper for having read this collection than it could possibly have been before.

This is the 20th Anniversary Edition, and it includes two introductory essays. One is an e-mailed dialog between Alexie and a fellow Native American Writer. This is forgettable. The other is Alexie's reminiscences about publishing his first collection of poems, and how against incredible odds it was picked up by the New York Times Book Review and given a glowing review, and how totally his life changed as a result. This collection was his follow-up to that small book of poems. I am glad this essay was included, to remind us that, for all the injustice and difficulties in this country, including those experienced by Indians living on reservations, sometimes America does deliver on its promise.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

Used at Western Washington University around 2009. This is a fantastic book and I'm glad I was required to read it in school.

Like most people, I rely on honest product reviews to make purchase decisions. Because the experience of others has been so helpful to me, I try to provide honest, helpful reviews to assist other shoppers in selecting the right products for them. I hope my review has been helpful to you!

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

This is an early collection of related stories from the author of "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian." The stories interconnect, and together paint a picture of growing up on the reservation is Eastern Washington State. Unlike in his novels, there isn't any clean conclusion to this collection, but rather a portrait of how life is, and I think maybe how life is for a lot of people, some of whom aren't Indians at all. An excellent collection, and well worth your time to read.The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (20th Anniversary Edition)

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

The stories in this book are heartbreaking and brilliant all at once. The writing is direct, humane, inspiring and smart. Sherman Alexie remains a distinguished voice, and I'm glad to see this 20th anniversary edition.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

So this is my all time favorite of Sherman's. I've read it at least three times, and each time I find something else hidden in between the lines. Native humor is often subtle, and you have to pay attention or you miss it. With Alexie, I can always go back in the the pages to revisit the details I first missed. It has an overtone of sadness as well, yet I feel that if people can find humor in tragedy, then there is hope.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

The reason this book is not only brilliant but important and necessary can be found in the one- and two-star reviews here: the sweeping, shameful, embarrassing ignorance and lack of concern among most Americans about what Natives went through and still go through. Until people are no longer surprised by how depressing and despairing these stories are, until people are more offended by the Native experience than by the "f-word," they must continue to be read.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

I think Sherman Alexie is a significant writer, and I'm glad I took the time to read these stories. Yet I didn't really connect with them. Since very few writers are writing about contemporary life on Indian reservations, Alexie has carved out for himself a unique genre. His flights of imagery and his metaphorical use of language and action deserve thought and observation, but emotionally I found the stories wandering off into situations that didn't interest me. I've seen him speak in person,and I found him witty and entertaining. I found the stories less so. I think I enjoyed his introduction more than any individual story.

There was a problem loading comments right now. Please try again later.

Very unique book, with an interesting narrative. I didnt find it to be as humorous as most reviews seem to think it is. It also feels a little dated, unrelatable because the narrative of modern tribes is such common knowledge now. I recommend this book, I read it for book-club, but you have to be into stuff thats a little hard to follow. Its the art-film of realistic fiction.